Some should stick to what they do best

Saturday

Jul 28, 2012 at 12:01 AM

The Olympic Games often produce a sports celebrity of the moment who tries and fails to make it in the world of entertainment. Mark Spitz and Michael Phelps have each demonstrated how spending years submerged in a swimming pool is poor preparation for comedy.

The Olympic Games often produce a sports celebrity of the moment who tries and fails to make it in the world of entertainment. Mark Spitz and Michael Phelps have each demonstrated how spending years submerged in a swimming pool is poor preparation for comedy.

Does anybody recall Nancy Kerrigan's 1994 attempt to host "Saturday Night Live"? Time magazine ranked her hosting appearance as one of the show's 10 worst. Michael Phelps also made the humiliating cut. My favorite Olympics misfire was Bruce Jenner's turn in the atrocious 1980 disco comedy "Can't Stop the Music." Jenner has returned to "entertainment" in "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" (9 p.m. Sunday on E!, TV-14). But that's atrocious on an entirely different level.

— Don't be fooled by its title: "Hillbilly Handfishin'" (8 Sunday on Animal Planet, TV-PG), now in its second season, is often surprising. The hosts of this show have turned an uninviting stretch of opaque brown water into a tourist destination and have transformed a primitive form of fishing called "noodling" into a life-altering event for the series' contestants. Never mind the snakes and bugs, not to mention the invitation to stick your arms, legs and even whole body into something called a "beaver hole."

"Handfishin'" is plagued by repletion and a tendency to spoon-feed viewers with rather self-evident changes in story and situation. But the hosts and creators of "Handfishin'" have the wisdom to emphasize the foibles and delusions of the weekly contestants, a steady stream of folks who will clearly do anything to get on television. This week's "stars" include a couple of young pastors from New Jersey who are out of their depth when they go down by the river to prey upon bottom-feeders.

— Will can't sleep and that means trouble on "The Newsroom" (10 Sunday on HBO, TV-MA). Writer/creator Aaron Sorkin has announced he's hiring a new writing staff for the second season of this series, already picked up by HBO. He's going to need them. This show careens from sanctimonious to ludicrous to unbelievable — often in the same scene!

The train-wreck quality of "The Newsroom" has given the show a certain guilty-pleasure cachet. (How bad is it going to be this week?) I don't think that was Sorkin's intent. His last TV series, "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," followed a similar trajectory, but NBC had the wisdom to cancel that after less than half a season.

— Malcolm McDowell ("A Clockwork Orange") stars in the 2012 update of "The Philadelphia Experiment" (9 tonight on Syfy). When scientists experiment on a device to hide a naval ship, they inadvertently rediscover a vessel hidden by a similar experiment in 1943, as World War II raged. How has the unseen crew been cooling its heels for nearly 70 years?

Look for Gina Holden ("Fantastic Four") and Nicholas Lea ("Supernatural"). Michael Pare, who starred in the original film from 1984, makes a cameo appearance.

— Wisecracking Fred Figglehorn heads to camp and yet another sequel in "Fred 3: Camp Fred" (8 tonight on Nickelodeon). At first he believes his mother has enrolled him in the world's dreariest summer camp, until he discovers that making new friends is really on the agenda. Look for Tom Arnold as Floyd, the camp director, in this gentle summer distraction.

— With the eyes of the world turned toward the London Olympics, BBC America invites viewers to catch up with a British television tradition.

A season five "Doctor Who" marathon (6 a.m. to 6 tonight, TV-PG) unspools all day, reintroducing viewers to the latest incarnation of the decades-old fantasy, now starring Matt Smith in the title role.

If there's an American equivalent to "Doctor Who," it's probably "Star Trek" and its many incarnations. And nobody represents that American series like William Shatner, star of "William Shatner's Get a Life!" (8 tonight on EPIX). In this film, Shatner examines the "Trek" phenomenon, its diehard fans and his own off-and-on affection for Captain James T. Kirk.

— Meanwhile, two similarly themed installments of "The Nerdist" (Tonight on BBC America, TV-14) touch upon the subjects of Comic-Con (9 p.m.) and toys and games (10 p.m.).

— Keri Russell, Skeet Ulrich and Mare Winningham star in the 2005 period drama "The Magic of Ordinary Days" (7 p.m., Hallmark), about the life of an unwed mother in wartime and the kindness of strangers.

Prank-calling teens make the mistake of dialing a murderer in the 1965 shocker "I Saw What You Did" (10:30 p.m. Saturday, TCM), one of four B-movies airing tonight on TCM starring Joan Crawford at the tattered end of her long film career.